The fragments of Anaxagoras

214 Pages·2005·7.193 MB·English

by  David Sider

David Sider · The Fragments of Anaxagoras
International Pre-Platonic Studies
Series Editors:
Jonathan Barnes (Paris), Rafael Ferber (Luzem/Zilrich),
Livio Rossetti (Perugia)
Volume4
David Sider
The Fragments of
Anaxagoras
Second Edition
A
Academia Verlag Sankt Augustin
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Contents
Preface to the first edition
vi
Preface to the second edition vii
Aids to the Reader viii
Chapter I: Introduction
1. Biography & Chronology 1
2. Anaxagoras' Works
a. Length 12
b. Diagrams 15
c. Number of Writings 19
3. Dialect & Style
a. Dialect 22
b. Style 23
4. The Order of the B Fragments 33
5. Simplicius and the Transmission of
Anaxagoras' Work 37
6. The Text of Simplicius in Physica 53
7. Allegory 61
Chapter II: ANAXAGORAEF RAGMENTA
Conspectus Siglorum 67
Fragments 68
Chapter Ill: Conclusion 171
Bibliography & Abbreviations 179
Indices
General Index 193
Index Locorum Potiorum 196
Index Verborum 200
V
Preface to the first edition
The main purpose of this work has been to present an
improved text and apparatus for the direct quotations attributed
to Anaxagoras. When I first began to investigate the problems
presented in interpreting Anaxagoras-at a seminar funded by the
National Endowment for the Humanities and led by Steven S.
Tigner, in Bennington, Vermont, summer of 1971-, I was content
to use the fragments as printed in Di.e Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker, first compiled by Hermann Diels and later edited by
Walther Kranz. Later, after I came to recognize the importance for
our knowledge of Anaxagoras of Simplicius' commentary on
Aristotle's Physics, first for merely providing the bulk of the frag
ments, and second for occasionally helping us to interpret a
fragment, I was able, thanks to a grant from the North Carolina
Research Council, to spend a month in the summer of 1975 at the
Aristoteles-Archiv in Berlin, where I examined microfilms, chiefly
of Simplicius in Phys., but of other commentators as well. To Ors.
Paul Moraux, Dieter Harlfinger, Jurgen Wiesner, and Diether
Reinsch, my thanks for making my work there so easy and my
stay so pleasant.
I am also grateful to Dr. Rosario Pintaudi of Florence for
transcribing for me those parts of ms.D which were illegible on the
microfilm; to W.W. Fortenbaugh for inviting me to present some of
my findings at a meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek
Philosophy, Washington, D.C., 1975; to S. S. Tigner and Jaap
Mans-feld for sending copies of their work on Anaxagoras in
advance of publication; to Friedrich Solmsen for his helpful
comments on section 5 of my introduction; to Miroslav Marcovich
for answering my many questions and for allowing me to make use
of his collations of Diogenes Laertius and Hippolytus; and last and
far from least to my wife for all of her support throughout these
last years.
New York, December 1980
V1
Preface to the second edition
As the first edition has been out of print for several years
(and rarely showing up in the second-hand market), it seemed like
a good idea to satisfy the desire of some scholars to have my book
on Anaxagoras once again available. This I can now do, thanks to
its acceptance into the series International Pre-Platonic studies by
its editors, Livio Rossetti (with whom I communicated), Jonathan
Barnes, and Rafael Ferber.
Th.is new printing offers the opportunity to correct
typographical errors and make some few additions to the first
edition. It has not been the occasion for much rethinking of
Anaxa.goras on my part; only for desultory and incomplete notice
of places where later writers may be profitably consulted. It may,
though, be properly labeled a second edition in that I have added
some new sections to the introduction and have tried to update
the bibliography even though not all new publications have been
taken into account here. I am particularly grateful to Patricia Curd
for encouraging me to return to Anaxagoras (she was not able to
find a used copy of the first edition); on the few occasions where I
altered my text to deny "the reader" of Anaxagoras the male
gender, I thought of her.
If nothing else, the book is now easier on the eye. The first
edition was typed on an IBM $electric II, the very latest in tech
nology available in the home in 1980. With a Greek keyboard (with
dead keys for accents, breathings, and iota subscript) and with the
then astounding interchangeable "ball," Greek words could be
typed precisely on the same line as roman type. (Before this, one
had to calculate the space to be taken up by the Greek, which one
inserted by hand after the page had been removed from the
typewriter.) There was also an italic ball and one with special
symbols. All one had to do was carefully type within the light blue
lines that outlined the area to be photographed. Now what was
once literally "camera ready" moves from author to publisher to
printer as pdfs.
Typographical errors been corrected and fragment nwn
bers added for more recently edited texts (such as Laks numbers
for Diogenes of Apollonia and Fortenbaugh-Huby-Sharples-Gutas
vii
numbers for Theophrastus). I have also corrected some errors of
fact and augmented some lemmata. Moreover, three chapters of
the introduction,, omitted from the first edition because of space
constraints, have been restored: sect. 2.2, Diagrams," 3.2, "Style,"
and 7, "Allegory." There is certainly much more that could have
been done to improve this book.
Where once I had to type my own copy, for this edition I
was fortunate to have my computer-literate students Elizabeth
Kessler and Maggie Beeler, not only to retype my marked-up first
edition, but also to help in the formatting of the text for the
publisher Hanz Richarz, who was remarkably patient as we med
to convert his requirements in centimeters to inches.
I thank David Blank for help in providing an updated
reading of a Herculaneum papyrus of Philodemus' Rhetorica and
Gotthard Strohmaier for showing me the relevant passage in his
forthcoming edition of an Arabic translation of Galen (see B 20).
In my first edition I thanked Fritz Solmsen and Miro Marcovich. I
wish that they were here to see the second.
New York, August 2004
Aids to the reader
Simplicius often quotes the fragments in more than one
place, sometimes with different wording or readings. When all the
mss. at a given place are in agreement with each other, but differ
from the mss. at another place where the same fragment is
quoted, I cite by page and line number in Diels' edition of Sim
plicius in Phys. E.g., gavr 164.17 om.166.15 (i.e., all the mss. at
164 .17 have yap, none does at 166.15). When at any one place the
mss. are in disagreement with themselves and perhaps with the
reading or readings of the same fragment elsewhere in Simplicius,
I may assign various diacritical marks to keep the passages
separate. E.g., in B 3, the readings of 164.17-20 are referred to as
DEFbW; the readings of 166. lSf., where B 3 is quoted in part, are
referred to as DEFbW. I also, at the cost of consistency, employ
vovs
references of the form: om.166.l(W). (I.e., all the mss. at
166.1 but W have vovs.) Throughout this work reference of the
form •sunpl(icius) nnn.nn" will always be to pages and lines in (in)
Phys. ed. Diels.
viii
When reference is made to ancient secondary testimony on
Anaxagoras, the DK number will be added in the abbreviated form
"A 80." When the testimony appears in DK only in abbreviated
form or not at all but in Lanza's more complete collection, an "L•
will be appended. Thus, e.g. , "Tertull. de An.43 (A 103L),9 where
only Lanza prints this tcstimonium; and "Procl. in Eucl I p. 64F
(A92L)," where Lanza's citation is longer than OK's.
References to ancient authors and their works will, I trust,
be immediately recognizable; for references to modem works, see
the bibliography, where frequently used abbreviations such as
"GG," "KR,"• oo,• and "Fehling 67" (vel sim.) are deciphered .
.
lX